Page 44

“No, miss.” sat down.

The assurance made Elizabeth’s knees feel unexpectedly weak. She

Mrs. Reynolds pulled forward the other chair but did not sit. Her eyes had filled with tears.

“Have I frightened you?” Elizabeth asked.

“A little.” The housekeeper took a breath. “And I was not always patient with my grandmother.”

Elizabeth understood that better than she expected. She waited while Mrs. Reynolds folded her handkerchief and put it away.

The next attempt accomplished nothing. On the one after that, Elizabeth remembered the movement in the dream differently: the fingers opening, allowing the thread to pass, rather than drawing it toward her. She let her hand uncurl.

“Loose the binding.”

The short end slipped through the knot.

Mrs. Reynolds sat down at last.

They looked at the straightened thread until Elizabeth began to laugh. It was not particularly merry laughter, but once begun she could not stop it at once.

“Jane will be delighted if I ever learn to do that with her wool,” she said.

Then she thought of telling Jane, and the laughter ended.

“I cannot tell my sister.”

“No, miss.”

“She would think I was ill. And if I mentioned the woman, or what we heard at the inn—” Elizabeth pressed her hands together. “I will not put such a fear into her head. We agreed that before any of this.”

Mrs. Reynolds nodded.

“And Mr. Darcy?” Elizabeth asked.

“He knows the old story. He has never believed it.”

A perfectly sensible man would not. Elizabeth had considered herself a perfectly sensible woman that morning.

“Then let us discover something worth telling before we ask him to believe anything.”

They made one further trial with a fresh knot. Elizabeth loosened it after two unsuccessful attempts. Mrs. Reynolds tied it again, then followed the same movement and said the same words. Her knot remained tied.

At last a knock sent them both looking toward the door. Sally wished to know whether Miss Bennet would come down for tea.

“In a few minutes,” Elizabeth called.

Mrs. Reynolds closed the copied book. “I must attend to my work.”

“And I must persuade Caroline that I have been attending to mine.”

Elizabeth took up the unfinished hem, which offered very little assistance to that design.

They agreed to meet again when the housekeeper could spare an hour. Mrs. Reynolds would keep the papers in their box and bring only what they needed. Elizabeth asked to retain the short piece of thread. It lay across her palm, plain and harmless, while the older woman packed away the evidence that somebody, a very long time ago, had known more than either of them.

At the door, Mrs. Reynolds turned back.

“Miss Bennet, you will send for me if anything troubles you?”